Full on!

Tahatto is back with their new play this Friday at the Alliance Francaise at 8 pm

Piali Dasgupta I Vasanthnagar

Tahatto’s
fourth production won’t leave you hungry for more. With a name like
Full Meals, one would expect that from the 80-minute play. Written by
Prashanth Nair and Badri Vishal, it’s a cluster of six stories. “Each
story represents a flavour of life. Some are spicy, some sweet; so it’s a
full meal at the end of it. They are about fun and simple incidents of
life with an Indian touch to them. But it’s more a reflection of life
rather than being nation-specific,” says Piyush Agarwal from Tahatto.
The seventh story adds a narrative flow to the play.
One
of the stories is set in Bangalore. Titled Three Times, it’s about how
three individuals react in a certain situation. One is an autorickshaw
driver, one is new to the city and the other is an old Bangalorean.
“They talk about issues that plague the city. The driver complains about
the influx of non-Kannadigas; the new guy feels Bangalore doesn’t live
up to its hype; the woman is accepting of the changes in the city,”
reveals Prashanth.
Two
of the stories (Toll Free Happiness and The God and the Psychiatrist)
are from their last production, A Funny Thing Called Life. The former is
about a guy who gets sacked, returns home and needs someone to talk to.
He randomly calls a holiday planning service and speaks to an automated
voice. The second is about a woman’s conversation with god. “She
constantly asks for proof of him being god,” says Prashanth.
There’s
a poignant piece called The Beginning and the End. It’s about a rookie
soldier (played by Yasin) at a location where, unable to communicate
with anyone, he initiates a conversation with his counterpart from the
enemy block. “He looks through his binoculars and answers his questions
with exaggerated sign language. When the general arrives, he questions
the soldier’s integrity. The general has orders to start a war and wants
the soldier to open fire at the person he was speaking to,” states
Prashanth.
Love
and Lightning involves an interaction between two strangers in an
airport café. “It’s a possible romantic situation between a hyperactive
girl and a reticent boy who have nothing in common,” says Prashanth. The
Proposal is about a man proposing to a deaf and dumb girl through sign
language. “The guy ends up wishing that he too were differently abled,
so that there would be no difference between them,” says Prashanth.